8 1/2

Screening on Film

Directed by Federico Fellini.
With Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée.
Italy, 1963, 35mm, black & white, 135 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Recipient of more than sixty international awards, 8 1/2 is one of the most lauded works in the history of cinema and one of the most celebrated creations about the inability to create. A famous movie director (Mastroianni), unable to find the inspiration to start his new film and harried by his wife, his mistress, and an assortment of industry hangers-on, retreats into personal recollections, dreams, and fantasies—replete with harems, spaceships, and a luminous actress (Cardinale). Described by Fellini as “something between a muddled visit to a psychiatrist and an examination of a disordered conscience with Limbo as the setting,” 8 1/2 is a brilliant portrait of the creative process and a powerful meditation on the relationship between the realms of fantasy and film.